


my heart the frontier, your heart the boundary

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Anger born of worry, Aranea Highwind (mentioned) - Freeform, Black Humor, Double Agent Nyx Ulric, Double Agents, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Ignyx Week 2018, Inspired by Music, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret (mentioned) - Freeform, M/M, Prompto Argentum (mentioned) - Freeform, Sickfic, Spy Ignis Scientia, but that's a secret - Freeform, tradecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 23:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16586630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Even if they play the layered and dangerous games of spy vs. spy, this -- isn't the first time Ignis finds Nyx in his bed, wracked with pain, cracking wise even as he burns away.





	my heart the frontier, your heart the boundary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stopmopingstarthoping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopmopingstarthoping/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "kissing", for [Ignyx Week 2018](https://ignyxweek.tumblr.com/).
> 
> There is such a ton of angst in this pairing even when they're in AUs so I'm kind of drawn to them. Oh, and did I mention: they're damn pretty together???

He could almost learn to care about the numbers, he thinks: he keeps his place in the stack of tattered pages with one hand, and types in numbers with rapidfire precision with the other, and the only thing that breaks his rhythm is the movement of his reading glasses, the slow slip-slide down the bridge of his nose, sweat of the day’s efforts trickling down his temples and it’s not even the first time he curses the inadequate climate control in this windowless box of a back-office room. Stacks of documents in ragged rows to cover every possible inch of table and shelf; the floor might as well be a civilization of overflowing crates, hemming him in.

Every so often he almost hesitates over one set of figures, almost remembers the actually correct sequence of digits before he catches himself and continues to type, exactly, efficiently. Feeding data into this particular terminal, which is linked into a ragged staggered network of workstations, a scattershot map of password-protected user instances across several public-sector agencies: and the idea, he thinks, is pretty ingenious in the concept. One or two error-values in a data set -- won’t do much to alter the output, after the set’s been processed and spindled and mutilated by some computer or another -- but a trail of faint breadcrumb-mistakes might be more than enough to help track the movement of the data from place to place, from one agency to another. Faint breadcrumb-mistakes like tiny red flags.

And if those mistakes, those red flags, happened to make it through more robust firewalls, more encrypted terminals, then they’d remain visible, at least to the minds that were looking for them. To the machines that were on the alert for them.

The whole ruse makes him think of a different medium. A different use for the misleading values. Paper towns, is what he knows them as. Names of fictional places dotted onto a map, helping to distinguish one cartographer’s work from another. Helping to protect against plagiarism.

Tracers, he thinks, as he turns to the next page, and immediately spots the next set of spoofed values, and continues to input the numbers that are both real and meaningless to him.

Not for the first time, he allows himself a small smile, because only Lunafreya could have come up with the idea. The elegance of the underlying concept, and a concrete idea of the execution, once the initial roadblock could be overcome.

And he’d stolen the original data set, too, him and Prompto, working in silent concentration, through nights that felt like they were each an entire week long. They’d relied on two super-secured terminals and a labyrinth of false branches through software logic and networked computers. Software-based breaking-and-entering, archive-cracking, in the depths of the ’net and its many, many, many branches -- and that had been the easy part, that had been child’s play.

Someone flits past the doorway into this room, apologetic smile, absent-minded: one of the other employees on this particular floor, a whirl of distraction and a late clock-out, and he sees that person as nothing more than a shape of sleeves and scuffed shoes, and he knows they see him as -- just another interchangeable face, another set of hands chained to a thankless and boring and numbing task. 

He’d succumb to that boredom, too, if not for the constant sharp edge of caution that he can feel, scoring along his fingertips as he keeps typing. The clack of the keys, the erosion of the painted-on lines, the smoothing of the plastic surfaces -- he can feel all of that, certainly, somehow simultaneously making his hours at work so much longer and so much shorter, but the edge belongs to -- the niggle of worry. The twist of trust, or the lack thereof.

“Percapere,” someone says, at the door, and he looks up slowly, pretending to be nothing but tired and dull. “You need to get out of here. Lockdown in thirty -- do I need to remind you every day?”

“Sorry, sir,” he says, and he isn’t entirely feigning the ache in his knees, in his ankles, as he braces himself on the worktable and gets to his feet. “I always lose track of time.”

“And you can’t even enjoy it,” the man, his not-quite supervisor, mutters in not-quite sympathy, as he steps out of the way.

He sneezes once he’s in the corridor, once he’s away from all those piles of paper, and doesn’t miss the eye-roll in response, even as he tosses a careless wave over his shoulder, even as he hunches his shoulders and breaks into a run -- not to the elevator, not with its floor-indicator lights already turned off for the day. To the stairwells, and down, facing the steps, seven floors’ worth.

As always, he looks in every possible direction -- even up, to the rapidly darkening night sky, and down, to the road that continues to exhale the day’s heat even as the temperatures continue to drop -- and he doesn’t straighten his shoulders until he’s well out of sight of the building where he’s spent another nine hours.

Doesn’t drop the disguise until he can duck into a random shop and -- under the pretense of looking for a book to buy -- extract the flesh-tone pieces of a little radio from a hidden pocket in the inside of his belt: the button that he clips into his shirt collar, and the bud-shape that he tucks into his left ear. 

“Can you hear me?” he mutters, once he’s back out on the street. 

“We can see you, too,” and he doesn’t glance at the flash of movement on the edges of his vision. The slight wiggle of a surveillance camera, tracking him for only a moment, perhaps just to see that he’s all still in one piece. 

“You’re clear, actually,” the voice continues, gently lilting accent. “You don’t have to put that act of yours on, all the way back.”

“I do,” he mutters, “because it occurs to me that I like being forgettable, and if people forget who I am, where I’ve been, then you might stay safe too.”

“We’re not exactly helpless.” Snort of laughter, and a click that makes him think of a battered leather-bound hip flask, and the firewater that it contains. “I mean, we’re watching your back right now, too.”

“We’ll see you to your doorstep at least,” Lunafreya murmurs. 

“Thank you, ladies,” he says, and Aranea continues to laugh at him as he presses on, in his disguised walk -- that doesn’t falter even as he passes one lamp-post, two, three, each of them sporting a tiny square of fluorescent-yellow tape just at his eye level. “I’ll take care of -- ah -- other business tonight.”

“Checking in?” he hears Aranea ask.

“I hope so,” he says.

“Good luck,” he hears Lunafreya say.

Worry, like leaden weights threatening to slow him down. Lack of trust, like thorns prickling in his gut.

It’s a wonder he’s still upright, when he finally makes it through the front door of his address in this city -- all the way through and then into the innermost room, where the corner between the bed and the wall is already occupied with a miserable shape of worn whistling breaths.

“Whatever it is you’re playing at,” he says, as he starts to undress, “you had better explain, and quickly.”

“Delivery,” is the response, but it takes him a moment to understand, because the word is -- clogged, is the best word he can come up with. 

“Which you can do without ever having to show up near me or mine. Is that not safer for you, as well?” Before he crosses to his closet, he sticks a piece of white tape to the corner of the windowpane, making sure it’s just visible from the street. 

A small marker, almost too easy to overlook, and it means: safe, for now. 

Suit jacket on a hook on the inside of the closet door, and then he reaches for the first-aid kit that he keeps next to his shirts, and it takes him a moment to extract what he needs. Decongestants, and a half-consumed packet of medicated lozenges for a sore throat, and a fizzy multivitamin tablet. 

All of which he drops next to a mud-stained boot, shaking shoulders, a bowed head. Hair in a ragged buzz-cut, which still isn’t short enough because he can see strands of silver near the scar-stained temples.

“Extra sets today. Year-end reviews are coming up.”

“Explain,” he says as he sits on the bed, and starts taking off his shoes.

The first response he gets is -- a violent coughing fit, that tapers off into the sounds of dry-heaving, and -- he’s only human.

This man is not on his side.

And he’s not supposed to care, but he does.

“Nyx, for heaven’s sake tell me if you need help with looking after that. With looking after yourself.”

“Didn’t think you’d care,” is the ragged reply. “Ignis. Or am I not supposed to use your name?”

Ignis sighs, but he also gets to his feet, and -- Nyx doesn’t even resist when he stoops to him, when he grasps him by the wrists and hauls him out of the damp crumpled sheets, up from the dirt and the tiles of the floor -- and the heat of that bare skin only adds its sullen tells to the wet choked coughs, the occasional full-body shiver -- the glassiness of those eyes that roll slow and lethargic towards him.

No time to curse, to call for help: Ignis peels away the outer layers, the sweat-sodden jacket, boots and belt and choker. “Stay there,” he warns, and although the closet is still open, although the fresh blankets are only an arm’s-length away, Nyx is still listing dangerously by the time he pulls the top one free and unfurls it -- to wrap around those tense shoulders and then -- down, not even a proper push, the thump of a body toppling onto the bed and the creased pillows.

“When was the last time you ate something? Drank -- ”

“Can’t. Remember,” and again Nyx dissolves into racking coughs, and Ignis has to turn away from him in order to get water and the cold-brewed tea that’s the only actual thing he keeps in the little refrigerator in the other room.

“Small sips,” he warns as he holds Nyx up, as he offers him a glass of water and a pair of yellow X-scored tablets. “Make sure you drink the whole thing.”

“You care for -- your people like this?”

“No,” he clips out.

“Am I special then, that’s nice,” and it seems to take forever before Nyx swallows the tablets. Before he takes the glass and drains it nearly dry.

Ignis offers him the tea, next, still fizzing with the addition of the multivitamin tablet.

“Do I have to?”

“Unless you want to burn away.” He makes himself take a steadying breath, and another. “What are you on about, doing anything when you’ve got that kind of fever? There are enough people hunting you, and in the state you’re in, you’re only making things easier for them.”

Sip, and a small broken sigh, is what he hears first, followed by: “Hurts so much I wish I were dead.”

“If we weren’t supposed to be working, or working together, I suppose I would have been glad to -- spare you a bullet.”

“Make it two and you’ve got a deal,” and with the next bout of coughing Ignis fully expects him to throw up all over the sheets -- and he does narrow his eyes when Nyx blanches and then clamps a hand over his mouth -- 

But Nyx manages to keep everything down -- manages to finish off the tea -- and Ignis shoves him, gently, against the wall for support. “Do try to stay where you are.”

“Tired. Sleepy.”

“Do you want to breathe? Then sleep upright.”

He takes one of the pillows and one more new blanket, and lies down in the narrow space that Nyx had been squeezed into, and the floorboards are cold even through his shirt and his jumper.

He’s all but resigned himself to a night of tossing and turning, to fitful sleep, when: 

“The hell you doing?”

“I asked you that, earlier,” and Ignis sighs, again. Crosses his legs at the ankle, and his hands over his stomach. The ceiling doesn’t improve on second glance, or third, when he closes his eyes and opens them again. “The number of times you’ve had to deliver the data sets in person -- I can hardly think of another instance.”

“Second set,” he hears Nyx cough.

“That might be it. But this? Tonight?”

“Nowhere to go. But -- putting you in danger. Putting you out of your bed. I need to get out of here.”

Click of his own tongue against his teeth, that sounds extra-sharp in the close atmosphere of the room. “Not while you’re more likely to kill yourself, crossing the street, or something just as mundane. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Sharp gasp, followed by a labored breath. “If you think there’s no succession plan -- ”

“I know there is one. I wouldn’t put it past you,” he says.

“So why -- ”

“Do use your brains, temporarily addled though they might be: if anything should befall you, I and mine would fall under suspicion, and then -- what would be the point of all the work that we have already done? If we were traced, if we were to be found out, if they somehow realized what we were all doing -- then all of this will have been for nothing. That is unacceptable. I will not allow that to happen, and if it means I must force you to get well, then that is what I will do.” 

He allows himself a bitter laugh. “The things I do for my queen and for my country.”

“And I for mine.” The words are followed by a small, choked sound like a sob. “Hate to be the red mark in your ledger.”

“Hardly,” he sighs. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He must fall asleep, somehow, because he’s startling, because he’s opening his eyes and now he’s awake, and there’s a long low breath that isn’t his, sobbing, rattling -- 

He doesn’t stop to think, he doesn’t hesitate -- he’s up from the floor despite the protests in his nerves, in his muscles, and he’s sitting on the bed and he’s pulling Nyx into his arms. Rocking, back and forth, trying to be soothing, trying to mutter comforting words.

“I can’t understand you,” he finally hears Nyx say, after a while.

“Forgive me,” he says, and doesn’t offer any other explanation.

He hasn’t spoken the language of his childhood in years.

“What was it?”

“I cannot sing,” he mutters. “So I spoke instead.”

“That was a song?”

Shift, and he’s a little surprised, and he looks down at Nyx’s face -- what little of it he can see anyway, tangled as the man is in the blanket, and in the pillow he’s clutching to his chest. “Nyx.”

“Cold.”

“You are burning up,” he says. 

“It passes, it always passes -- I always survive. I wish I didn’t.”

Delirium, Ignis thinks, and that’s probably the only reason why Nyx is reaching for his hand. For the death-grip that leaves his fingertips quickly numb with its desperate strength.

But he doesn’t let go, and doesn’t push Nyx away -- he settles him closer. Whispers, “Breathe. With me.”

“Can’t -- ”

“You can.” Implacable.

He counts, softly: _In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five, six._

Falter, falter, as Nyx stutters through the start of the pattern, the first few repetitions -- but Ignis feels it when he breathes. Feels it when the tension finally starts to bleed out of him, jagged slow, easing into a frown, and a vigilant kind of sleep.

And he feels it when Nyx’s hand goes slack around his own and -- he winces for the pins and needles, and doesn’t let go.

Only then is he brave enough to lean in close.

The kiss is no more than a brush, no more than a ghost, and he lays it softly against Nyx’s too-warm skin, against the throb of his heartbeat at his temple.

And afterwards he watches Nyx far too sharply, far too carefully -- waiting with held breath for the possibility of waking.

Of being found out.

There are no marks on Nyx’s skin to give away the kiss -- neither this one, nor all of the others that he’s stolen, because Nyx passes out injured or worn away over and over again, enough to be more than alarming, enough that Ignis isn’t even the only one to wonder whether the man has a death wish -- and those are the only times when Ignis can trust himself to show the man some kind of humanity, some kind of affection.

Surely that last is the -- misplaced kind, he thinks, in the here and now. As misplaced and unneeded as paper towns, that he can’t stop himself from leaving on Nyx anyway -- only in the hidden moments, only in the trembling interstices, where there’s no one else to see, and where he’s the only one who’s playing the fool.

Again he kisses Nyx, closer to the mouth this time.

The words from earlier, in his mother tongue, that he breathes out reverent and gentle and soothing against unconscious stubble-growth and scars: “Heaven knows no frontiers, and heaven is in your eyes.”

**Author's Note:**

> The song that Ignis doesn't sing is ["No Frontiers"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFPuTSW-qPc) (this version performed by Sharon and Caroline Corr).
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- I'm gonna be around for quite a while yet!


End file.
